Remembering the Future of Orange County's Great Park"History
has shown us that the Great Park of Orange County…"

The
president of the United States stops in mid-sentence as a gust
of wind unsettles the stage bunting, whooshes his hair and lifts
the first lady's skirt. Overhead, a mini-tornado of dandelion
puffs corkscrews
around a GREAT PARK 50th ANNIVERSARY banner. As the wind settles,
a confused blue-grey gnatcatcher roosts on the podium. President
William A. Pilgrim smiles.

"As
I was saying, history has shown us — and I'm sure my little
friend here would agree — that this Great Park is the best
thing that ever happened to Orange County."

The
overflowing crowd hoots and whistles so loud it startles itself.
From the twin spires
above the Joan Irvine Smith Amphitheater, two
hovering cameras zip back to position in a stand of valley oaks
that quiver in the after breeze of a Fujicolor-perfect day. Stroking
his
graying beard before he Tai Chis an arm northward, Pilgrim continues.

"This
park — this 4,500-acre dazzling emerald of nature and humanity — reflects
the magnificent civic pride and spirit of cooperation that,
during its creation, encompassed all of Orange County."

"Bullshit," an athletic, green-haired woman in a short skirt,
knee-high all-terrain boots and a "Clone Me" halter
top mutters under her breath.

Back in 2001, George Argyros wanted to turn the land
where the Great Park now stands into an international
airport — and he had the
power, money and political friends to do it. Never mind
that Orange County was growing more slowly than any adjacent
county and didn't
need another airport. Never mind that the airport plan
would have required shuttleloads of money to destroy
and then rebuild the runways
from the outdated military base that was once here.
Never mind that jumbo jets and cargo planes would have
taken off and landed 24/7 over
thousands of homes and businesses. Never mind that air
pollution, noise pollution and traffic congestion would
have transformed a beautiful
neighborhood into a chainlinked warehouse yard; that
the then-newly remodeled John Wayne Airport — paid
for with tax dollars — would
have been forced to shut down; that the airline business
was in such dire straits at the time that it had to be
bailed out by the federal
government. Never mind all that. Argyros wanted a shiny
new international airport — and he wanted it ASAP.

Short,
stocky, bespectacled and publicly pleasant, Argyros — a
Fabergé egg of a man — was
the financial and, by default, spiritual guide to
a group of Orange County business and political leaders
who at the turn of the millennium
were stuck in time. This group, regrettably, constituted
the majority on the Board of Supervisors. Referred
to
as the Argynauts, their economic
vision was based on the 20th-century business model
of cargo and manufacturing. Unfortunately, they failed
to realize that Orange County's economy
wasn't.

Even
in the 1990s, Orange County's success was measured by 21st-century
high-tech standards. The
recession
of the early 2000s
didn't change that. A new airport in Orange County
was simply a bad idea. Cargo planes don't move information.
Runways attract baggage
handlers, not entrepreneurs and Ph.D.s. But Argyros
was in a hurry to have his outdated way. "Patience
is for losers," he once
said.

A
California real-estate magnate, CEO of a prominent and savagely
diversified investment firm, financial
chair of the California Republican
Party, onetime owner of AirCal, and President
George W. Bush's U.S. ambassador to Spain, the overeager Argyros
was a well-connected man
about town. Born in Detroit, raised in Pasadena
and
a respected alumnus of Orange County's Chapman
University, he counted mid-20th-century
President Richard Nixon and ex-Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger (yes, the war criminal) as his
friends.

"Mr. Callahan. Mr. Callahan." I snap back to the park celebration.
President Pilgrim is still speechifying about
the beauty of it all.

"Don't
you want to talk about Argyros?" the green-haired woman
asks.

I
ignore her and watch a flotilla of cumulus clouds spooling through
the electric blue horizon.
As
if to mock me, one
formation resembles
George Argyros' profile.

Someone once said (and for the life of me,
I can't remember who) that if you want to
know
a person's
religion, you
don't ask them
what it
is, you just wait and watch what they worship.

Argyros
had religion. His god was money. By 1981, at the
age of 44,
he had enough
of it to buy baseball's Seattle Mariners.
Yet, in his tenure as owner,
he was never given the keys to Seattle.
In fact, Argyros spent his
time
tweezing off Seattle. When the Mariners
didn't become the mother lode he was expecting, he
raised ticket
prices and
threatened
to move the
team. Then, as if to outblow Mount St. Helens,
he jacked up the sticker price of his best
players, selling them
off one
by one
before cashing
in on the sale of the whole franchise. The
reaction was not favorable.

"Seattle
gave everything in the world to George
Argyros,"Seattle Times
columnist Steve Kelly said. "And
George Argyros gave Seattle the bird."

Kelly
described Argyros as "a clever, deceitful
fraud." A major-league baseball executive
offered a more pragmatic summation: "Argyros
doesn't view himself in terms of winning,
only in terms of profit."

That
myopic fiscal perspective followed Argyros everywhere.
In Orange County in the 1990s, when
he served
as chairman of Apria Healthcare Group,
the company allegedly shorted Medicare
at least $103 million. In 2001, Argyros'
real-estate investment
firm, Arnel Management Co., was accused
of illegally withholding renters'
deposits and overcharging for repairs.

Suffice
it to say that the
word "unscrupulous" was
a likely association when George
Argyros' name
came up.

"Nathan. Naaaaythin. Are
you a'ight?" It's
Greenhair again. I'm jangled back to the
present. President Pilgrim is still rambling,
and this woman is now in my face. "Everything
okay?" Greenhair asks. "Can
you hear me? Argyros. ARE-JI-RUS. You
remember your old buddy George, don't
you?"

I
pretend to be hard of hearing. In fact, before my
prosthetic eardrum implant,
I was. (It's a RC240 eardrum developed by Assam Industries
Research
Center, adjacent to the Great
Park.) "

ARE-JI-RUS.
ARDUOUS. ARE-JI-RUS." Greenhair
has now taken up a slow, dissonant chant.
I am unresponsive. I am a century old.
I deserve a little fun.

Argyros
was only 63 when he
became a billionaire at
the turn of the millennium. Back then, he lived in lavish
excess on Harbor Island
in Newport Bay. I'm sure there
were days when George would
sit on the deck of his 100-foot Liberace-white yacht
and dream about bottom-line
expectations. He probably believed
that the money an international
airport at El Toro would have generated for the
Argynauts — money
from air cargo, leasing
warehouse
space, and perhaps withholding
security deposits from tenants — would
have been wholly gratifying
in a mid-20th-century robber
baron kind of way.

Though
the $3
million Argyros gave to
political campaigns to
promote his dream of an international
airport was only a fraction
of his wealth, it was
a significant political
investment by Orange County
standards. That is, unless
you count his compatriots
on the
Board of Supervisors,
who spent more than
$40 million in tax money
on what they referred
to as an "airport educational
campaign." (As
if the people of Orange
County didn't know what
an airport was.)

Argyros
described
his airport as a "gift." He
should have contemplated
the gift that Colonel Griffith
J. Griffith gave to Los
Angeles on
Dec. 16, 1896. "I consider
it my obligation to make
Los Angeles a happier,
cleaner and finer city," Griffith,
a California gold mine
speculator, said when
he gave 3,015
acres of his Rancho
Los Feliz
estate to the people
of Los Angeles. They
later
named the gift Griffith
Park.

There
would be no Argyros
Park. Instead, pamphlets and letters
promoting the airport
arrived in the mail
as regularly as carpet-cleaning
coupons. Remember,
those were the days of paper
mail. A steady stream
of mailers claiming
the Great Park was a bad idea
thought up by naive
aristocrats hit every mailbox in Orange
County. The
Argyros strategy
was simple. Pit the
North County against the South.
Tell the predominantly
blue-collar citizens of the North that
the predominantly
white-collar
citizens of the South
were selfish, privileged, parochial
ingrates who wanted
money to
build a pleasure garden.

It's "a
classic case of
class warfare," Argyros
himself said. "The
South County is
all spanking-new,
and they live
behind their guarded
gates. It's almost
the working
people of the North
against the haves
in the
South." I imagine
Argyros concocted
that grammatical
abomination and
his working
man vs. privileged
class strategy while
sitting on
the deck of his
yacht.

While
the airport opposition
supported its
efforts with
money raised from
thousands of Orange
County citizens,
Argyros simply
wrote big
checks and counted
on the support
of the Board of Supervisors.

In
2001 the political
earth shifted
in Orange County. A
petition
to replace the
airport
plan with the Great
Park was
signed by more than 170,000
Orange County
voters.
The issue
would soon be decided
at the polls.

It
wasn't the first
time that the
suggestion
had been made to transform
a military
base
into a
park. On May 29, 1977, Sand
Point — a
former
Naval
Reserve
Air Station
in Seattle,
Washington — became
Warren
G. Magnuson
Park.
And on
Oct. 1,
1994,
the
Presidio — a
U.S. Army
post in
San Francisco — became
part of
the Golden
Gate National
Recreation
Area.

But
history and the
efforts
of more
than
170,000 Orange
County voters
didn't
stop
the stream
of the
Argynauts'
propaganda.
They
claimed that jobs
would
disappear
if a
Great Park
were
built and that
pollution
left
behind by the
Marine
Corps
base
would require
the
site to be
paved
over
and
fenced off (presumably
for
an airport).
It was
all
nonsense, and
the
people of Orange
County
knew
it.
On March
5, 2002,
they
went to the
polls,
rejected
Argyros'
airport
and
voted "yes" for
a park.

"Nathan,
it's time
to take
your medication." Greenhair
is talking
nonsense
again.
I stare
blankly
ahead
and applaud
the president's
speech,
which
is meandering
to its
metaphor-laced
conclusion.

"There
were times
when people
only considered
the short
term," Pilgrim
says. "Accomplishments
were born
and measured
in nanoseconds.
But 50
years
ago, the
courageous
and insightful
people
of Orange
County
knew that
it takes
time
for anything
meaningful
to come
to fruition.

"The
beauty
of the
park that
surrounds
us
is the
harvest
of their
patience," Pilgrim
continues. "For
their
perseverance,
we owe
a great
debt.
Like our
country's
forefathers,
they understood
the sentient
nature
of
time."

As
the rocket
blast punctuates
the end of Pilgrim's
speech, the Orange
County Chorale
breaks into "God
Bless America."

"Nathan.
Naaaaaythin, it's time
to take your
medication."

Greenhair
is bobbing a black
and white capsule
in front of me.

"MR.
CALLAHAN. DRAMASPORIN
TIME."

"From
the mountains to the
valleys. Open
up and say ahhhhh." I
swallow.

"What
a wonderful windbag
Pilgrim is," she
says. "I'm
surprised you didn't
fall asleep. You know,
Nathan, your Alzheimer's
will soon be less
than a memory."

Thanks
to the capsule
and modern pharmacology,
things begin
to jell in my
mind. The
clouds have passed.
Next week, I'll get
my permanent Brainwire
at the El Toro
Neuro Center
on the Great
Park's Eastside.
Soon I'll be processing
data like a Mac
G50.

"Were
you drifting?" Greenhair
says. I smile
and wave to the
president. He waves
back as I settle
into the seat of
a shuttle.

Behind
us is Newport
Beach's parade
entry — a
giant inflated
sailboat whose
bow reads, "Still
in Love With the
Great Park After
50 Years."

"I
bet this is what
they used to call
'irony,' huh, Nathan?" Miranda
says. "Everybody
all bone up for
the park. The cities,
the supes, the mayors,
even Argyros —God
rest his soul—went
out waving the banner.
You must have told
me a thousand times
about how back
in the day,
they pissed on the
idea of a park.
What do you think
now?"

Fuentes
was the chairman
of the Orange
County Republican
Party in the
late 20th century.
In 2008, he lobbied
Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger to change
the name of the
Great Park
to "The
Richard Nixon
Memorial Recreational,
Cultural and Wildlife
Corridor." It
almost came to
be in 2010,
but the whole
idea quietly
went away after
The Secret Letters
of Pat Nixon
was published.

With
the
Fuentes puppet
close behind,
our shuttle charges
up the Park's
Westside. It's the
place to live — commanding
the highest property
taxes in Orange
County — since
the Life Online
feature story.
In the 2010s,
the Westside
fed off the prestige
of the park and
vice versa — just
like Manhattan. In fact,
Dewey Trump,
Donald's test-tube
son, tried to develop
the area in
the 2020s but was
taken to the
bank by his fourth
wife. Thank
God. His taste
in architecture was about
as refined as his
father's.

Our
shuttle
makes a left
out of the Westside
at the Dick Sim
Botanical Gardens
and moves
toward the Central
Concourse. The parade
crowd lines
the street in front
of the Orange
County Central
Library, the Sherwood
Rowland Exploratorium,
I.M. Pei's Natural
History Museum,
Frank Gehry's
post-post-postmodern Art Museum
and Michael Graves'
Longevity Research
Complex. On
the horizon, framed
by a row of pink
cherry trees,
the bell tower
of Cal State
Fullerton's extension
campus chimes
noon.

Just
after
the end of the
19th century, wealthy
Manhattanites tried
to outdo one another
in a contest of
architectural philanthropy
for New York's
Central Park.
A similar spirit
of competition settled
easily among
Orange County's
well-to-do. This
benevolent oneupmanship
wasn't anything
new to us. In
the 1980s, our
Performing Arts Center
was built through
donations. All of
the Great Park's
structures were
constructed through
subtly self-promoting
generosity — that
is, except one.

Curiously,
the only park
structure paid for
with tax dollars
is a statue
of Cynthia Coad.
Coad, a supervisor
in the early
2000s, was pro-airport
to the bitter
end. Her view of
the Great
Park was abnormally
limited. "A
park would create
a lot of grass-cutting
jobs," she
once said, trying
to downgrade the prospects
of park employment
as opposed to the
airport. On the
day her statue
was unveiled,
some doctors from the
Great Park
Medical Research
Center contributed
to Coad's legacy
by hoisting a lawnmower
into the statue's
oversize granite
hands.

I
stick
out my tongue
as our shuttle
swings by Coad,
makes a right
on Tom Rogers
Parkway at the
Smithsonian West (now
under construction)
and cruises under
the Tim
Carpenter Torch
of Peace near the
hydraboat dock at
the 100-acre Lake
Michael Pinto.
We loop into
the main parking
lot on the old
military airport's
runway and make
our way on foot
past the hangars
that now house
the Colonel Bill Kogerman
Veterans' Memorial.
By the time we
arrive at Bren
Exhibition Hall,
workers are putting
the finishing touches
on a sign that reads, "2054 — THE
GREAT PARK GOLDEN
ANNIVERSARY EXHIBIT—ORANGE
COUNTY'S BIG BACK
YARD."

Miranda
leads me past
nodding VIPs into
the "It
Happened at the
Great Park" hologram
exhibit. As we
stand at the
back of the
crowd, the opening
strains of Ingram
Marshall's "Orange
County Suite" fill
the auditorium
and
phantom
images
shimmer by:

• A
group of smiling
voters outside
a polling place
at the 2002 election
that put the Great
Park on the
map.

• A
catheter shot
of
the U.S. Army
Corps
of Engineers
sucking
the last
drop of pollutants
out of the Park
site (circa
2004).

• An
aerial cruise
through R.J Brandes
Equestrian
Woods.

• A
long tracking
shot
of
the Walkie Ray
Science Center
at the Great
Park Exposition
of
2010.
(That's where
I got my turbo
prostate.)

• Crowds
cheering at
the
Re-elect President
Hillary
Clinton rally.

• Crowds
cheering at
the
Impeach President
Hillary
Clinton rally.

• A
ride on
the
Zephyr
light-rail
line at the
2015
Panama-California
Exposition.

• President
Bill Gates
declaring
the Great
Park a National
Historic
Monument.

• A
doddering
Larry
Agran
and Tom
Fuentes
hugging
at the
Great
Park 25th
Anniversary.

• Inside-the-ball
action
from
the
2032 World
Cup.

• A
time-lapse
shot of
construction
at the
2035
Pacific
International
Exposition,
where union
laborers
smile and
wave
at
high speed.

• A
helmet
view
of
the Streetluge
competition
at the
2040
Olympics.

• George
Argyros
cutting
the ribbon
at the
opening
of
the
James
Doti
Center
for Statistical
Research.

"It's
funny
how
Argyros
re-packaged
himself.
I
never
trusted
him.
Once
an
asshole,
always
an
asshole," Miranda
says
to
a group
of uninterested
tourists
standing
near
us.

"Shhhh." I
try to
quiet
her. "Don't
talk
like
that.
George
Argyros
turned
out
fine."

"Greedy
people
make
a life's
goal
of
convincing
themselves
that
they're
not
in
it for
the
money," says
Miranda.

Meanwhile,
the
holographic
display
continues
with
a collage
of
artists
at the
recent
44th
annual
Great
Park
Music
Festival.

"Not
since
Frederick
Law
Olmsted
designed
New
York's
Central
Park," a
narrator's
voice
says, "has
the
public
been
as
visionary.
As true
21st-century
romantics,
the
people
of
Orange County
believed
in
the
power
of
nature to
cleanse
our
spirits
of
the
toxic drudgery
of
urban
life
and
created
the first
21st-century
park."

"Enough
of
this," I
say
to
Miranda.

But
she
ignores
me.
She's
glassy-eyed,
still screeching
about
Argyros
and
airports
and
politics and
greed
ad
infinitum.
I
think the
combination
of
3-D
nostalgia
and
the Rhinorama
atmospherics
wafting
from
Bren
Hall's Dolby
Digital
nasal
enhancers
have
turned my
caregiver
into
an
opinionated
dervish.
Maybe she
has
allergies.

"Miranda,
pleeeeeeese
shut
up," I
say.
But
it's
my
caregiver's
turn to
be
unresponsive — adrift
in
the
holograms,
the
artificially
generated fumes,
the
imagery
and
the
careening course
of
her
own
monologue.

"Goddamn
lucky
we
didn't
get an
airport
here," she
says
to
anyone
who'll listen. "Remember
the
close
call
at LAX?
Some
screwed-up
flaky fundamentalist
all
duct-taped
up
with a
buttload
of
C4? Who'd
have
thunk
they'd try
to
evacuate
LA
County? It
was
nearly
Karma-fucking-geddon."

With
that
remark,
a
cluster
of
surrounding
dignitaries gives
Miranda
the "one
more
crack
like
that, and
we're
calling
security" stare.
At
this
point,
the girl
would
talk
to a
dead
tree. "Let's
go
outside
for
some fresh
air," I
say.

"My
little
cousin
thinks that
911
emergency
number was
named
after
the
World Trade
Center…" she
says
to
no
one in
particular.

I
feel
like
I'm
in
lockdown
at
a
psychedelic day-care
prison
and
it's
time
to make
my
break
from
this
ball
and chain.
As
Miranda
continues
her
hallucinatory
tirade, I
lose
myself
in
the
crowd and
head
for
the
exit.

Outside,
I'm
surrounded
by
a
garden's
deep
photosynthetic green.
The
sun
is
high
on
the horizon.
I
join
the
flow
of
a
crowd moving
toward
the
Allergan
Concert Shell,
where
a
neo-Ethiopian
noise
band is
about
to
take
the
stage.

"Ladies
and
gentlemen," an
MC
says. "A
big
roundhouse
for
the man
who
put
the
funk in
dysfunction,
the
hardest-working clone
in
show
business, Mainstreet
Media
recording
artist Piggy
Boy
Simon."

A
seven-foot,
pretzel-thin
man
of
indeterminate
ancestry steps
up
to
the
mic. "Heeey,
Yaba,
daba,
gashi, heinie
ho!" he
shouts.
The
crowd
echoes his
sentiments,
and
Piggy Boy
responds, "Satchel
Paige
once
said,
'Work like
you
don't
need the
money.
Love
like you've
never
been
hurt. And
dance
like
nobody's watching.'
Well,
today
nobody's watching."

The
Pig
Boy
headbutts
his
guitar — KAWANG — and
launches
the
band
into "Greed
Lunchbox."

World
slowed
down
caught
up
with
us.
Last
cool
hunter
in
a
lunchbox
truss
nothing
left
inside
his
skull
wanks
and
moneyblanks
think
parks
are
dull.

As
the
music
continues,
I
stroll
among
white alders
into
the
square,
where
a
cross-section of
Orange
County's
young,
old
and
in-between dance
circles
around
the
George
Argyros Memorial
Fountain.

At
this
off-center
moment,
I
am
certain that
the
park
is
the
most
beautiful place
on
earth.
There,
with
his permanent
smile,
eyes
to
the
sky
and arms
akimbo — a
carousel
of
water
twirling
around
his proud
Greekness — Argyros,
chiseled
in
Carrare
marble, offers
stoic
approval of
the
park
and
the people.

Our
Great
Park
is
not
Yosemite
or
Belize or
the
Greek
Islands.
It's
better. Here,
the
sublime
is
accessible,
tangible,
evergreen, humane.
The
beauty
of
its
landscape and
architecture
can't
be
measured
by
accountants. It's
a
proud
public
place
unbound
by commerce — its
essence
not
to
be found
in
business
journals or
travel
magazines.

When
the
construction
of
New
York's
Central Park
began,
it
was
said, "If
well
done,
the
park will
be
the
work
of long
time
and
will
embody the
work
of
many minds
by
the
patient toil
of
human
hands." The
same
is
true
of the
place
in
which
I stand
today.

After
50
years,
the
Great
Park
has
matured into
a
place
of
jubilant
reverence. Not
just
a
museum
or
an
event center
or
a
statue
named
after another
prominently
dead
person — it's
where
Orange
County came
together
and
where
the future
will
go
to see
itself
young.

I
think
that's
what
George
Argyros
came to
realize
at
the
time
of
his conversion.

In
2002,
right
around
when
he
was appointed
U.S.
ambassador
to
Spain,
Argyros
disappeared from
the
park
vs.
airport
debate. No
more
fat
checks
for
direct
mail. No
more
grammatically
inferior
pro-airport
quotes. No
more
Trojan-horse
gifts
to
Orange
County. The
reason
Argyros
vanished
remains
a
mystery. Some
say
he
was
hit
on
the head
(and
had
some
sense
knocked into
him)
by
a
baseball
off
the
bat of
a
Seattle
Mariner
at
Anaheim
Stadium. Some
say
he
struck
a
deal
with the
Ambassadorship
Committee
and
agreed
to
stop giving
money
to
the
airport
campaign in
exchange
for
a
smooth
confirmation. Others
say
his
close
friend
Donald Bren
simply
convinced
him
that
it
was
better to
be
a
visionary
than
a
loser. But
I
like
to
think
that
George Argyros
found
a
better
god.

Whatever.
A
few
years
later,
Argyros
re-emerged in
Orange
County
as
a
changed
man.

In
2004,
when
the
ground
was
broken for
the
Great
Park,
Argyros
donated a
shuttleload
of
money — not
for
an
airport
but
to
build the
Great
Park's
Central
Concourse.
I remember
him
saying
at
the
dedication
ceremonies, "It
will
not
come
by
watching
for it." I'm
not
quite
sure
what
he
meant by
that,
but
it's
a
far
cry
from "patience
is
for
losers."

SWIIIIISH!

Above
me,
a
12-year-old
Afro-Cambodian
boy
on a
new
Nokia
spacescooter
zips
by and
speeds
around
the
stage
where
Piggy Boy
is
delivering
a
long-ass
power chord — bringing "Greed
Lunchbox" to
a
beautifully
reverberating
end. I
hear
a
familiar voice. "Mr.
Callahan.
Mr.
Callahan."

It's
Miranda.
She
seems
to
have
recovered from
her
histamine-induced
soapbox
frenzy.

"What
are
you
doing
out here?" she
asks.

"Enjoying
the
park," I
say.

Then
she
asks
me
again
why
anyone
would want
to
build
a
monument
to
George Argyros
here,
at
the
Great
Park.